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On a cross-country road trip to Minnesota last year, we had several old cassette tapes along to listen to in our 1993 van’s cassette player with the intention of discarding those we no longer liked. After discarding several tapes along the way, I remembered seeing items crocheted from cassette tapes on the web. So into the bag they went with my supply of plastic bags for plarn. I figured since I had some on hand I might as well try it out and see if it works for my crocheted plastic bags.

So the experiment began. My first thought was that they might be sharp on the edges and cut my hands since the plastic is stiffer than most grocery bags. My second thought was that plastic strips are really skinny, way skinnier than the plarn I normally crochet with. Since I don’t want to make miniature purses I decided to try adding the tape strip to a regular strip of plarn as additional accent color.

Somewhere on the long drive I tested out my new material. The pictures show the test-run bag I made adding cassette tape plastic into the mix. The combination of the two materials gave an extra shimmer to the colors of the purse.

Turns out the cassette tape strips are very easy to crochet with and even added extra shine and shimmer to the test purse. From the purple, lavender, and gray bags I imported from plastic bag paradise (Belize) I created this purse. My cousin in Texas saw this shoulder strap purse, Sugar Plum, on my Bags2Bags facebook page and purchased it for a Christmas gift for her sister-in-law.

The tapes once played some wonderful music for our ears, but now bring some shimmer to our eyes.

Note :: One thing I discovered is that some cassette tapes are a gray color and others brown, so I realized I have to have plenty on hand to make sure I have the right color for my project. Remember to check the colors if you ever decide to recycle your old cassette tapes as plarn.